It was not a pleasant sensation to find themselves alone, shut up in a cave, only a faint glimmer1 of light being visible, and from which there appeared to be no means of escape. There was a peculiar2 clammy dampness about the atmosphere, and a strange vault-like smell. It might have been an old tomb, so weird3 was everything surrounding them.
‘The stone must have swung back into its place,’ said Edgar. ‘Yacka will open it when he returns.’
‘All the same, I don’t like it,’ said Will. ‘Suppose he could not move the stone again. If anything happened to him, we have very little chance of getting out.’
‘There is no occasion for alarm at present,’ said Edgar. ‘I trust Yacka, and he will soon return. To pass away the time we may as well examine the cave. It is evidently only one of many. The whole of these rocks and hills are honeycombed.’
They stepped cautiously, and felt the sides of the cave, finding them smooth and even.
‘Here is another of these peculiar formations like a bunch of grapes,’ said Edgar. ‘Perhaps there is another stone that swings round. We can try at any rate.’
He pushed the hard knob, as he had seen Yacka do, and cried out excitedly:
‘It moves, Will; come and help me! Push hard! I can feel it giving way.’
Slowly the huge stone moved, and there was an opening wide enough for them to pass through.
Edgar went through first, but came back quickly when Will called out the opening was closing up again and the stone swinging back into its place. Edgar had just time to step back into the cave when the stone swung to.
‘That is the way the other must have closed up,’ said Edgar. ‘It made no noise. Let us have another try, the cave on the other side is much larger than this.’
‘If we get through,’ said Will, ‘the stone will swing back, and we shall be worse off than before. Yacka will not be able to find us when he returns.’
‘He will follow us,’ said Edgar. ‘He must know of this cave and the way to enter it.’
‘If you mean going on, I will follow you,’ said Will.
They moved the stone again, and this time they both stepped quickly through before it swung back.
The cave they entered was, as Edgar said, much larger than the one they had just left. It was lighted by the same dim light, but they could not see from whence it came.
‘Here is another knob,’ said Will. ‘They must have been made by the blacks. Perhaps we are on the way to the cave of Enooma. I wonder what Yacka will think if we reach it before him.’
‘He will think we have been guided there by the White Spirit,’ said Edgar, ‘and will regard us with superstitious4 awe5. It would be a good thing if we could come across the cave he spoke6 of without his help.’
The stone turned in a similar way to the others, but this time they found themselves in a long passage, like an old mining tunnel in a rock.
They walked cautiously along, but there was more light here than in the cave they had left. Edgar kicked a loose stone and it rolled some distance in front and then vanished, and they heard a splash. The stone had fallen into a deep hole, and as they peered down they saw the water rolling slowly along at a considerable depth.
‘It must be an underground river,’ said Edgar. ‘We have had a narrow escape.’
They shuddered7 to think what would have befallen them had they not been warned by the stone. Round one side of the opening was a narrow pathway, and along this they passed safely to the opposite side, looking well ahead in case there should be more of these death traps.
The passage wound through the rock in a tortuous8 manner, and after they had gone a considerable distance, they sat down to rest and wonder where it would lead them. Will wished they had remained in the cave and waited for Yacka’s return, and Edgar began to think he had ventured upon a foolhardy journey.
‘We are in for it now,’ he said, ‘and shall have to go on, for we cannot find our way back, and even if we did, we could not push the stones round from this side. It looks very much like the workings of an old mine, but there can have been no mining done here, because the blacks know nothing of such work. What’s that?’
They listened intently and heard a faint sound in the distance like someone in pain and wailing10 aloud.
‘Come along,’ said Edgar, ‘there is someone ahead of us.’
They walked on as fast as they were able, and presently came to the end of the passage. Here they found another stone blocking the exit, but it had been partly pushed aside as though someone had just entered, and it had not swung back into its place. Edgar passed through, and as he did so held up his hand to caution Will not to make a noise.
It was a strange, weird sight they saw. They had[171] entered another large cave, but it was of a totally different formation to those they had seen. At the far end of the cave was a beautiful crystal wall nearly thirty feet high. The stalagmites were short and thick, and the stalactitic formations extremely long, many being over a hundred feet in length. Massive deposits could be seen on all sides heaped up in the most curious manner. Many of them were of a wondrous11 salmon12 colour, others were deep red, and brown, and several glittered with a dull blood-red glow.
They were awed13 by this grand, majestic14 freak of Nature. To the left was another passage, full of magnificent columns of stalactites and stalagmites, all pure white and diamond-like in brilliance15; they seemed to be coated with sparkling and lustrous16 gems17. These columns rose from floor to roof like huge pillars in some vast cathedral. They were of different formations, but all about the same height. All the colours of the rainbow sparkled in the various pillars, and the effect was dazzling.
Passing down this magnificent column passage, untouched by the art of man, and marvelling18 at its strange beauty, they came to a beautiful shawl-like formation of the purest white, which hung suspended from the roof............